


Mea Culpabill

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 13:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21508684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: Ford thinks he knows what to expect when Dipper asks to talk to him after the battle, after Stan has fallen asleep in his armchair with Mabel's scrapbook open on his lap and Mabel herself scrunched down beside him and still chattering away excitedly.  The girl has at least lowered her volume in deference to Stan's being asleep, but she hasn't stopped talking, telling Stan over and over about the summer's adventures.Mabel may be an enigma to Ford, but Dipper he thought he understood.So he fixes his glasses and grins down at the kid, and says, "I know, kiddo, Gravity Falls is a bit over-explored now, but there's a place in the Arctic that I'm sure you'll find just as fascinating! It's a distance, I know, and it'll be harder for us to keep in touch but surely-""I'm not going."Ford stops short.
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Ford Pines
Comments: 20
Kudos: 164





	Mea Culpabill

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for beta'ing, shinobicyrus!

Ford thinks he knows what to expect when Dipper asks to talk to him after it’s all over, after Stan has fallen asleep in his armchair with Mabel's scrapbook open on his lap and Mabel herself scrunched down beside him and still chattering away excitedly. The girl has at least lowered her volume in deference to Stan's being asleep, but she hasn't stopped talking, telling Stan over and over about the summer's adventures.

Ford is finding that doesn't like seeing Stan asleep. Which is ridiculous. Bill is gone and Stan's the one responsible, he's more than earned his rest, but Ford wants to wake him back up and check his pupils and-

And to see if there's recognition, still, in those eyes.

Mabel is a worker of miracles, but Ford can't quite trust in miracles. Can't quite believe that they'll last.

Mabel has a kind of power in the strength of her beliefs, though, and if anyone can reclaim Stan's lost ( _stolen_ ) memories it's her. Ford may not understand his niece, and he may not have the faith in her miracles that his family does (did-), but he does have faith in _her_.

Dipper, though- Dipper he thought he understood.

So when Dipper comes to him later that night, after Soos has called his abuelita to check in and then planted himself on the floor beside Ford and joined in Mabel's storytelling, after Wendy has come _back_ for the night despite the fact that Ford had thought that this was only a summer job for the teen and not somewhere she comes to stay _willingly_ , after Stan and Soos have fallen asleep and Wendy's parked herself by the broken door like a guard, like a guardian, Ford thinks he knows what Dipper wants to talk about. 

So he fixes his glasses and grins down at the kid, and says, "I know, kiddo, Gravity Falls is a bit over-explored now, but there's a place in the Arctic that I'm sure you'll find just as fascinating! It's a distance, I know, and it'll be harder for us to keep in touch but surely-"

"I'm not going."

Ford stops short. 

"I wasn't going to stay in Gravity Falls," Dipper clarifies, crossing his arms and glaring at the floor. "And I'm not going to the Arctic with you, either." He raises his head, and there's a challenging gleam in his eyes that Ford wasn't prepared for. "Not unless this invitation is for Mabel, too."

Ford looks over to the open doorway before he can help it. The sounds of Mabel's voice and Stan's snores drift in from the next room, illuminated at this angle only by moonlight. The television and most of the furniture and parts of the walls had gone to change the house into the mech the rebellion had fought Bill with, and they've only been back here for a matter of hours. He's seen Soos looking around like he's itching to start fixing the damage more than once but Soos is clearly more worried about Stan than he is about the shack.

Ford wonders uncomfortably if Stan would have a better chance at recovering his memories if the Mystery Shack looked more familiar.

He wonders uncomfortably exactly what Soos and Wendy's connections to his brother are, because he'd never thought to ask before and he's come so close to losing his chance entirely. But surely Stan would have told him, right? If these kids are something more to him than employees?

He shakes himself. "Dipper, I know you love your sister, but you're the smart one. You can't pass up a chance like this!"

"No, I'm not." Dipper's arms are still crossed, but now the kid is shaking. 

Ford pauses, rewinds his own sentence in his head. The grammar in the response is off in a way he wouldn't expect from Dipper, but then the boy _is_ twelve and he has just been through an apocalypse. "You're coming after all, then? Atta boy!"

"No!" Dipper snaps. His fingers are digging into his arms where he's clutching them, turning his skin white. "No, Uncle Ford, I'm not the- the _smart_ twin! Is _that_ really how you think of us?" He lets go of his arm long enough to gesture wildly back at their siblings, before immediately clutching both arms close again. The longer he does it the more Ford starts to think Dipper isn't so much keeping his arms crossed as he is wrapping his arms around himself. "Is that how you think of Grunkle Stan?"

"I don't-" Ford startles, finding himself floundering for words in a way he hasn't in years. "No, of course not."

"No?" Dipper demands, and he's angled himself oddly now. It takes Ford a minute to realise the boy is trying to hover protectively in front of the doorway. "You _both_ told us what happened. You let him get kicked out over a mistake. _One_ mistake."

Ford bristles. "That one mistake cost me-"

"Your dream school. I know," Dipper interrupts. "But Uncle Ford- what about what _you_ cost Grunkle Stan!"

Ford blinks, shoulders dropping out of a defensive hunch he hadn't been aware of. "What- what _I_ cost _him_?"

"Yeah, you know." A scowl looks terribly out of place on Dipper, as though he's trying to imitate one of Stan's expressions but can't get it quite right. "He made a mistake, Uncle Ford. _I_ make mistakes, are you gonna kick me out of your life and leave me somewhere alone when I do?" He looks away, the forced scowl settling into some other expression, one that seems far more familiar to his features. "Because Mabel wouldn't. She would never do that to me. I know that, because we do both make mistakes, we make them all the time, but we don't- we don't hold them against each other!"

"Dipper," Ford starts, but rapidly finds himself at a loss for words. He wants to defend himself, wants to explain again that Stan _had_ cost him everything he'd dreamed of and it's understandable, isn't it, that Ford would hold a grudge, but-

But what _had_ Ford cost Stan?

 _A lifetime._ _His family, his home- his whole life._

Ford shies away from his unwelcome thoughts, but he can't deny the ring of truth to them.

Backupsmore wasn't somewhere he'd have gone given a choice in the matter, but it hadn't been awful. He'd met Fiddleford there, after all. He'd gotten his grant money, gotten his research funded, gotten a house and a purpose and a life in Gravity Falls and- and his life had been good, before he'd begun to make his mistakes. His life had been wonderful, up until he'd made the worst mistake of all in trusting Bill Cipher.

(Ford's life, that Stan had stepped into.

Ford's house, that Stan had paid for.

Ford's _name_ , that Stan had taken for his own.

... _Ford's_ mistakes, that _Stan_ had more than paid for).

"I'm not mad at him anymore, Dipper, you know," Ford says, trying his hardest to gentle his voice. He's never been any good at that, but Stan can do it, he's heard Stan be gentle with the kids. Against all odds, Stan is _good_ with the kids. 

If Stan can do it, then Ford can do it.

(Had Stan ever believed the same? Had Ford ever given him reason to?)

Dipper mumbles something so quietly that Ford can't make it out. 

Rather than ask him to repeat himself, Ford waits as patiently as he can. If it's important, Dipper _will_ repeat it, he's sure. In the few short weeks that Ford has known him he's learned that Dipper can and does struggle to speak up, sometimes, but also that if Ford is only patient with his nephew it won't be long before Dipper is comfortable enough to speak louder. 

And then Dipper does repeat himself, and an icy hand clenches around Ford's heart. 

Because Dipper looks up at him, eyes dark with too many emotions for Ford to identify, and says flatly, "Grunkle Stan wouldn't have shot you."

And Ford-

Ford has nothing to say to that. 

He has answers that he _wants_ to give. Stan couldn't have shot him if he wanted to, not with the metal plate in place. Stan isn't the one who'd had information that needed to be kept from Bill at all costs (at _this_ cost-?). Stan had _volunteered._ Stan-

-Stan wouldn't have shot Ford.

Even with all the reasons reversed, Stan wouldn't have shot Ford. 

And as much as he hates it, hates to admit it (and _oh_ does he hate to admit it), Ford knows that just as well as Dipper does.

"Mabel wouldn't have shot me." Dipper's voice is soft, now, and he's not looking at Ford. "And I couldn't shoot her. So, I'd love to go to the Arctic, Uncle Ford- but not without Mabel and Grunkle Stan."

...had Dipper included Stan the first time he'd said that? Ford can't remember, now. 

He falls back on defending himself, because that's what he's best at. Because that's what he did for ten years whenever anyone tried to ask him about his family, because that's what he'd done for another thirty whenever he'd asked _himself_ what could have gone differently. 

"If your Grunkle Stan had just _listened_ to me-" Ford begins, and then sees that Dipper's already backing away, shaking his head and looking crushingly disappointed. 

"I wasn't there," Dipper says, finally. "I mean, of course I wasn't there, I wasn't born. And we've never used the time tape to- wait, that's not the point. The point is I don't know exactly what happened. It's not like Grunkle Stan tells us the truth all the time, but he does that to _protect_ us. I don't-" Dipper swallows. "I don't know you well enough to know what makes you lie."

That he could be the honest twin doesn't ever seem to cross Dipper's mind, Ford notes. 

That twins don't have to be separated out by their traits like that doesn't ever seem to cross Dipper's mind. 

(Ford can admit to himself that he's jealous of the difference in Dipper and Mabel's names, in their interests, their friends, their _lives._ Clear enough, that these kid's parents hadn't forced such a specific narrative on them, but then in the short time he's known them Ford already can't imagine that the kids would have gone along with it if they had). 

Ford can hear Mabel still, her voice going strong in the next room as she continues to tell rapid-patter stories about their summer, repeating the ones she seems to like the most. Sometimes she slips into a story the kids evidently hadn't mentioned to Stan ( _what_ had she said about the minigolf course-), only to catch herself and turn back to a different story, a different memory.

He'd thought at first, uncharitably, that she was repeating herself because Stan hadn't involved himself that deeply in the children's lives this summer. He's not sure when Stan would have found the time, between the portal and the Mystery Shack and the stories Mabel had begun with. 

He's still not sure when Stan found the time, but it's clear enough that however he had done it, he _had_ made time for Dipper and Mabel- and not an insignificant amount of it, either. From what Ford gleams from Mabel's enthusiastic storytelling, Stan found a way to make time for Soos and Wendy, as well. 

Even as Ford thinks that, with his nephew glaring up at him and his niece finally beginning to falter and yawn in the next room, a different voice takes up the recitation- Wendy, adding onto Mabel's tales when she begins to trail off, adding stories of her own. 

Wendy starts to talk about spending time out around a campfire with Stan and Soos and the kids, her voice low and measured but full of eager reminiscence all the same. She talks about exploring the bunker with the young twins and her co-worker, about banding together to fight the shapeshifter Ford had so unwisely abandoned. She talks about Stan teaching her to pick locks, about him offering her a job when he'd seen that she needed one, about him letting her get away with skiving constantly even though he insists he's a strict employer. 

In thirty years, Ford has only barely made friends. In thirty years and uncounted dimensions, none of those friends are the sort who will miss him enough to come looking now that he's vanished from their lives. 

In thirty years, Stan found himself a new family and began to reconnect with their old one, and Ford is suddenly sure that any one of these kids _would_ follow Stanley through dimensions. He thinks Dipper and Mabel would even follow Ford himself, because they know that _Stan_ would, and he doesn't think that he can discount Soos or Wendy following, either. 

How many people _had_ followed the twins into that battle?

The whole town is still calling them heroes.

"Uncle Ford?" Dipper's voice is steady and confident, bolstered with the kind of resolve that lets him take his sister's hand and taunt demons and lure nightmares away from his family at his twin's side. "I'm not asking you to decide right now. I just want you to know that I won't do it without them." 

And Ford... Ford doesn't know what to think. 

He wants Dipper to come with him. That hasn't changed. The boy _is_ brilliant, capable of keeping up with Ford, curious and determined and more than willing to put in the effort to see his research through to the end. By now Ford knows that Dipper faced Bill twice and came out of the experience scarred but not broken or beaten before Ford had even made it back to this dimension. 

Bill had lied to Dipper much as he had Ford, but Dipper had known not to trust the demon in a way that Ford hadn't.

Because Dipper knows lies. 

Because Dipper knows Stan. 

"I'll think about it," Ford says, softly, already knowing in his heart that as soon as he reassures himself that Stan is still here and still recovering memories with their niece's help, he's going to go lock himself in his room and make plans for the Stan O'War II. 

And that those plans will involve at least two cabins, at least four bunks, space for guests and space for a deeply loved pig. 

**Author's Note:**

> hi im a twin 
> 
> and this show gave me a rapid series of existential crises


End file.
